Collections Online

Label from '[un]seen [un]heard]' display intervention 2020: "Busts such as these, known as ‘specimen types’, were created by Europeans artists on their return from expedition trips to colonised parts of Africa. Ward created this with the culturally specific features of the Aruwimi people from the Congo superimposed onto the face of a black model based in France."

Born in London in 1863, Herbert Ward left home at the age of 15 and began his world travels first to New Zealand and Australia, later to Borneo. In 1884 at the age of 21 he set out for the Congo. Following his return from Africa in 1889 Ward began a career as a writer and a popular lecturer about his Congo experiences. His lecture tours took him around the British Isles and to the US. In America he turned his attention to the fine arts. For much of his artistic career he lived and worked in Paris producing sculptures of African subjects inspired by his time in the Congo and his collection of artefacts from that region. After his death his wife donated his collection and many of his sculptures to the Smithsonian Museum.